Busy is a busy does

I've been working with a magnet, a rake, and a broom to clean up the concrete slab and the small bits of metal that are in the dirt around it. The 'good stuff' that was hidden in the garage included old rusted coffee cans full of old rusted nails of every size one could think of.

I do know that Rich's father also collected nails, even straight used ones. My Grandparents' generation never threw out things that could be re purposed or reused. My mom was the same way as was Rich's folks and Rich. For those that lived through very hard times, repurposing was not a fad but a necessity.

So, if the garage had never been crushed or inundated with water, most of those nails could have been useful to build something with the lumber that is in the dry confines of our machine shed.

Unfortunately, the clean up dropped a LOT of nails and chunks of miscellaneous metals all around the all garage. This weekend, I filled two 5 gallon buckets with pieces of metal, glass, and nails. 

Patrick will be back to do some more work this coming week in the meantime, I am looking for broken glass, metals, and sharp things along with metals. A good magnet on a handle is a great helper.

The dogs check on the progress and then go lay down on the porch. It is too tiring to watch me work.

I did manage to take some 'fun' time for me. On our morning hike/walk with my 4 legged pals, I took some toys.

Hannah is still learning to not always nose over toys while I am photographing. Charlie has that down pat.

The two shots below were done with a deep foggy morning and very little sunlight. I knew the fungi wouldn't stick around once the sun came out so I grabbed my 1:87 HO Scale mountain climbers and thought...this could be fun!

It turned out to be fun. Twice I dropped the tiny guy in the blue shirt. Thankfully it wasn't in a bunch of flowers and it was in the mulch where I could find him easily.

 I believe the fungi/mushroom is called Pleated Inky Caps. I find them often in the flowerbed mulch. They are doing a job enriching the soil and breaking down the mulch so I just admire them.

On the dog hike, I brought Qilin, the Mythical Creature from Lego. I built this not because I like the kid series Monkey Boy, but because the creature is posable and delightfully colorful.

I know that Qilin and the Ninjango character I acquired years ago seemed to just go together.

I carefully carried it out to the meadow. [Carefully, I didn't want to lose any pieces of this mythical creature!]

I think Lego missed the point in putting these characters in different toy stories. Definitely this guy and the dragon match in glowing and bright wonderful colors.

no dogs knocked this down!

I left the Mythical Creature at the campsite and followed the dogs deep into the woods. I let them be my guides. I should do that more often.

I found dozens of sights in my forest with Indian Pipes aka Monotropa Uniflora. I like the names: Ghost Plants and Indian Pipes better.

What an amazing background a group of them would make alongside a deer trail for my Princess Sara and her faithful bodyguard Joan of Knight.

Yes, Princess Sara rides a horse and carries her faithful stick horse which I am assuming has magical powers. She also has the little red dragon with her. They are on a mission and a journey to defeat some evil in the world.

After an early morning of tromping through the woods and getting soaked by the dew, we returned home to continue working on the cleaning the old garage site.

By late afternoon, I decided I'd had enough back breaking bending over work and charged up the mower to trim the yard. Over the week we had another half inch of rain along with humidity and heat so the grass decided to really get with the growing program again.

Now that it is out of the way, I don't have to deal with it until next week [hopefully].

I went to bed early. The dogs were exhausted from supervising all day.

But when I woke up around midnight, I couldn't help but stay up a bit longer to admire the Milky Way from the porch.

Looks like a busy short week ahead. 

I am planning this weekend to be joyful. With a celebration of my husband's life. Of course it will be bittersweet, but I carry him in my heart always.

I can be so stupid!

It started out like any other day. 

 I did a bunch of 'stuff' after chores and then decided to take Charlie for a nice little walk down to the creek to see what the warmer temps did to spots in the creek bottom.

I took along a Lego build in a plastic container. I had some ideas that jumped into my head but hadn't figured out what I was going to do yet.

I'd just built a Mythical Creature called Qilin that is a so beautiful in its colors that I felt I needed to have it and display it. It is from a Lego kids' animated series called Monkey Kid. I did look up the series and made it through one 30 minute show. I wanted to see what it was about. Very easy. Good vs. Bad. Good always wins in the end.

Hmmm. I would like to say...why doesn't that happen in real life?

Only in Fantasy?

Anyway, I digress. I took my Mythical Creature [I like its name Qilin, I won't change that] down  to our icy creek. 

In my head the brilliant colors vs the ice would be beautiful.
It was.

I love my Lego creatures. I like dragons and mythical creatures, always have. 

I also had a Wizard and a Tetradactyl in my tote. The wizard will enter into the Princess Sara stories somehow, I just haven't thought of it yet.

I came up with this. The magic here is that the Tetradactyl has a wire attached to it which I stuck in the tree so it looks as if it is flying.

I would hesitate with that beast flying towards me, but the wizard must have it under control. I believe he is going to ride it!

Charlie and I did our rounds of the creek and stopped by the ice wall before heading up over the hill to the ridge and back home. I gave Charlie a lot of dog time to sniff and explore.

A happy dog is a dog whose owner takes time for them to enjoy themselves also.

The ice wall over the past week it has expanded quite a bit with the melting during the day from above and the freezing at night and cooler temps on a shaded hill over the cold stream.

That was the end of our morning walk, we crossed the field on the ridge and went home.

I had things to do like fold laundry, change the sheets, do some book work, and make some calls. I fixed a 'well' balanced lunch of eggs, bacon, strawberries, and oranges. 

Charlie was enjoying the warm weather on our south facing porch when I decided to make a 'walk' out of getting the mail on the ridge. 

I put on my light weight coveralls and grabbed my little backpack. I put my cell phone in a sleeve at the backpack and immediately thought. 

That is a stupid place to put it. 

OHHH, I'll be so careful!

Famous last words.

I picked up my mail and a book I ordered. 

More about this book after I do some work in it. I can see that it will be helpful to me.

Soooo. As I stuck the package into my backpack, once again I thought, that is a very stupid place to put that phone. Surely though, I can be careful, it is just a walk down the gravel road.

I walked about 50 feet from the mailbox and spotted an empty can of beer on the edge of the woods. An idea popped into my head and I decided to push my way through the brambles and pick it up.

I grabbed it and walked along the opposite edge of the road and set my idea up. 

[I use these two characters in a series of toy photos. They collect metals they find.]

Balancing the little guy was quite a feat. However after a few trials and errors, I got what I wanted. These guys are always in a grubby type setting and the dirty snow was absolutely perfect.

We walked on.

Charlie chased a 'possum which ran over to a pile of wood where it flopped to the ground. Charlie poked it with his nose and the 'possum never moved. I went to grab my cellphone to take a photo.

Um.

It was gone. IT. WAS. GONE!!!!

So I retraced all of my steps over and over and over again. For a 1/2 mile walk, I managed to do 2.5 miles to the search. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find it. The phone was still recording my steps so it was somewhere nearby. 

I went home and charged up my old phone and then Googled *Find my phone* Google showed me where it was located on a map. I went up and looked. 

NOPE.

Then I went back home and clicked on *ring the phone* or some such thing. I jumped in the car and drove to the general area and turned the car off.

I could hear my phone! I have a chicken ring which is loud and obnoxious. It lead me right to my phone which was exactly where I missed it in the briars just past where I picked up the beer can.

What lesson did I learn? Put the phone in a secure place! 

What an idiot.